The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is a love story and a portrait of two lives that illustrate the transformative powers of both love and art. Marie Losier brings to us the most intimate details of Genesis’s extraordinary, uncanny world.
Genesis P-Orridge has been one of the most innovative and influential figures in music and fine art for the last 30 years. A link between the pre- and post-punk eras, he is the founder of the legendary groups COUM Transmissions (1969–1976), Throbbing Gristle (1975–1981), and Psychic TV (1981 to present). But that’s just the preamble to the story. In 2000, Genesis began a series of surgeries in order to more closely resemble his love, Lady Jaye (born Jacqueline Breyer), who remained his wife and artistic partner for nearly 15 years. It was the ultimate act of devotion, and Genesis’s most risky, ambitious, and subversive performance to date: he became a she in a triumphant act of artistic self-expression.
In warm and intimate images captured handheld, Losier crafts a labyrinthine mise-en-scène of interviews, home movies, and performance footage. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye documents a truly new brand of Romantic consciousness, one in defiance of the daily dehumanization of the body by the pervasive presence of advertising and pornography, conveying beauty, dignity, and devotion from a perspective never before seen on film.
Short Theater 2020 also hosts Marie Losier’s Felix in Wonderland!, scheduled for September 11.
